Lots of birders who use twitter (X) have recently started using BlueSky as an alternative. This is because twitter has changed a lot since Mr Musk took over and it's now virtually impossible to avoid your account being taken over by hate posts, political propaganda, adverts or other stuff which most of us don't want to see. It's often not a pleasant place to be. 

BlueSky looks very similar to twitter but a major advantage is that it can be customised to show only posts that you are interested in e.g. birding, moths, butterflies etc. and there are so far no adverts. Lots of birders have moved to BlueSky already and more are doing so daily, however it is in the early days and there are occasional teething problems, and some things are missing that we might expect on twitter, e.g. at present you can't post video.

BlueSky uses feeds which are similar to but more powerful than hashtags used on twitter and these allow you to easily customise what you see. Birders will be particularly interested in the #UKBirding feed which you can pin to your version of BlueSky in such a way that you will only ever see posts to #UKBirding. These feeds are moderated so that if unsuitable content gets posted to them it can be filtered out and persistent offenders can be blocked. The moderator is the person who creates the feed.

I have created two birding feeds called #PFBirding (for Pennington Flash) and #StHelensBirding which if you include in your BlueSky post will direct your messages to everybody who uses the feeds. Other feeds could be created, e.g. #GMBirding.

If you're using BlueSky already and are birding at Pennington Flash or in St Helens please consider using #PFBirding or #StHelensBirding, if you're not on BlueSky but still on Twitter, maybe have a look and see what you think. It's very easy to set up. If anybody needs any help with any of this please let me know.